


Fourth of July

by claryschild



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989), anderperry - Fandom
Genre: Fourth of July, I don't even know what this is myself, M/M, Sufjan Stevens - Freeform, and I've been listening to fourth of july on repeat since the clock struck midnight, anderperry, is todd high? or demented? or dead? we will never know, it is 3 fucking am, just a lot of words put together with a garbage attempt at prose, queer, the best way to go insane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:22:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28271589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claryschild/pseuds/claryschild
Summary: "He was dissolving with the fourth of July. He was the light in the sky, the immortal constellations on the earth’s ceiling, the fleeting laughter in the throats of the children, the papery sound of the dragonflies, all the hurt, all the joy – he was all of it. He was the Fourth of July."or, in which, Todd and Neil meet on the Fourth of July.(title and the fic as a whole was inspired off of sufjan stevens' fourth of july.)
Relationships: Todd Anderson/Neil Perry
Kudos: 20





	Fourth of July

Todd lay on the grass with his eyes shut. His head played an image of his family frantically searching for him, calling out his name, making ghastly faces that looked almost comical – he opened his eyes, they were gone. He kept his eyes open, he wanted them all to be gone.

What was the time? Todd stopped caring about the time since a while, now. Day and night faded in and out, it was all one and the same, like a generic melody. Todd had stopped caring about anything really. The pen scribbles on his arms from days ago were still here; he hadn’t scrubbed them off, his hair had grown out longer; brown locks tickling the nape of his neck, the skin at the bottom of his feet was cracked dry. He felt outside his body. He didn’t know what he felt. He wanted to die.

When would the fireworks start? Neil would come to see him when the fireworks would start – Todd urgently needed to know when the fireworks would start. Because, Neil, promised. That he’d come.

A dragonfly buzzed about Todd. He heard the papery flap of his wings in his ears, he felt it in his stomach. It reminded him of a book being flapped open and shut, open and shut – he saw so clearly in his mind’s eyes; Neil with his script of a Midsummer’s Night Dream, crown of twigs sitting galanty on his dainty head of brown hair. His smile had been so bright the day he got his role. It had lit up the crevices of Todd’s heart then, and it did now. Neil wasn’t gone. Neil couldn’t be gone. He was immortalized in Todd's brain, the sound of his laugh still rung clear as water in his ears.

The fireworks started. Infinitely dark sky blooming with bright bursts of color. Flashes of light that reflected brilliantly in Todd’s eyes as he gazed up at the extravaganza scene with his sad eyes. The dragonfly with its wings of paper buzzed a little louder and Todd felt it,

felt Neil sit down beside him.

He sat with his legs crossed, in his tree-green sweater, the one he’d worn to the cave the first time the dead poets had been there. He looked like a wish. Then again, didn’t he always?

“Hi.” Neil said.

“Hello.” was Todd’s quiet, subdued reply.

“It’s the fourth of July.” Neil said after a moment, his voice held a breezy quality to it.

Todd turned his head just enough so he could study Neil’s face in the light of the fireworks in the sky. The sharp angles of him, the soft curves, the light and the dark – it was all so beautiful, it hurt Todd. He began to cry.

Neil’s arms were around him in an instant, “Why are you crying?” He asked helplessly. Todd let himself be held – he hadn’t let that (properly) happen since the night Neil died.

“I’m sorry I left, but it was for the best.” Neil ran a soothing hand through Todd’s hair, down his back, pressing close mouthed kisses to the side of his forehead, where the vein was throbbing.

“You did wrong.” Todd managed through his waterlogged throat.

“I know, I know. It never felt right to me.” Neil kept Todd close, kept the comforting touches and words going, “I’m sorry. My little Versailles, my darling Lune, I’m so sorry.”

Todd put his forehead against the white of Neil’s bare throat, he was paler than when he’d been alive.

Todd had begun to hate that color. So white, painfully, overwhelmingly white. It had been even whiter in the days following Neil’s passing. White hospital walls, white papers, white sheets, white clouds, white snow, white faces, white hands. The cloth Neil’s body had been wrapped up in was the whitest of all. Everything else looked like it had been filtered by grayscale compared to it, just shades of gray.

The color has leeched out of everything.

“That’s not true.” Neil’s musical voice spoke softly. He pointed with a finger to the illuminated sky hung above them.

That will fade, too. Just the same as all other light. Light doesn’t stay.

“Then we will pass with the light.” Neil said in his firm, determined voice. The voice Todd loved so much, loved with all his heart, all of him. Is that a promise, Todd inquired with all the hopefulness of a child asking for an extra candy. It is, came Neil’s merciful answer.

The papery dragonfly rose – it sounded like faerie music now. It drove itself into Todd’s head, gently twisting its way around him, an invisible red string that wound itself around Todd’s being, unraveling him. Neil was with him, Neil was always with him, floating about him like the mystical thing he was.

He felt timeless. He was young, he was old. He was all of it. He was liberated. He was dead, he felt the earthy soil in his throat, but it didn’t choke him. He felt like the earth; he was alive, oxygen filling his lungs like the Tillamook fire conquering the ancient trees in Oregon, mercilessly taking them over – alive, alive, painstakingly, beautifully alive.

He was dissolving with the fourth of July. He was the light in the sky, the immortal constellations on the earth’s ceiling, the fleeting laughter in the throats of the children, the papery sound of the dragonflies, all the hurt, all the joy – he was all of it. He was the Fourth of July.

**Author's Note:**

> WROTE THIS AT 3AM MY MIND WAS A BLUBBERING MESS OF EMOTIOSN AND FEELIGS AND ANGST AND WORDS OK IM SORRY


End file.
